Wonderland (13 page)

And I think about them. Ed, Emily, the Plastics. And I think,
I’ll show them who I am. Who I can be.

I laugh. “Well, I’d love to.” I put on my best southern belle. “But I don’t have a thing to wear.”

“You must have.” Stella sighs.

I lose the Blanche DuBois. “I don’t. I’ve worn that black dress to death. . . . Can’t I borrow something of yours?”

Stella sits up, her face lit with a eureka moment. “I have a better idea.”

“No, Stella . . .” It is going to involve stealing, or something illegal, I know it. Neither of us has any money.

Stella looks at me as if she has discovered a cure for cancer. “Charlie.”

“What?” I don’t get it. I think she means coke, cocaine. But it’s not. It’s something else. Just as dangerous.

“Charlie. Your mum. Eighties poster girl. There must be tons of her stuff from photo shoots stashed away.”

Then I know what is coming. “Yeah, but . . .”

“But nothing. Oh, God, I bet she has a Lagerfeld.”

“Um. Maybe.”

“What? You don’t know?”

I don’t. I was still a kid when they were packed away. Miniskirts down to my ankles and heels so big I would wade around the house, clopping like a country horse. But Dad didn’t like seeing me in them. Reminding him of what he didn’t have. Of what happened. So now they lie mothballing in the attic.

“Jude! You’ve got your very own Dixie’s in the house and you’re wearing a T-shirt that cost three pounds.”

“I don’t know, Stell.” But I do. I want to see. Want to dress up again.

And she knows it.

“It’s a waste of good fashion, otherwise. Come on. She’d want you to wear them. Pretty please . . .” She pouts.

I can’t argue. She is already backing out of the door, and I follow her, like I always do.

I feel like I’m opening the Ark of the Covenant. Sitting in the dust of the attic floor. Not sure what angels or demons are going to fly out of the trunk and possess me. I pull aside the catches, rusting now, and slowly lift the lid, half expecting golden light to pour out, shining from the treasure within.

And it is treasure. Westwood. Dior. Galliano. The names wink at me, saying,
I told you so.
I touch a violet minidress. The smell of her wafts up, overpowering. Like someone packed her into a case and shut the lid on her. Preserving her for me to find now that I’m sweet sixteen.

“Oh . . . my . . . God!” Stella looks like she has won the lottery. She pulls out a boned strapless thing, tiny waist, miniskirt billowing out like a tutu. “Gaultier. It is so going to fit me.” She holds it against herself and strikes a pose. “How do I look?”

I stare at Stella draped in iridescent blue silk and black lace, standing among the trunks and boxes and broken things of the attic. But all the time I am seeing her. Mum. Getting ready for a Christmas party. I must have been six or seven. Alfie not even inside her yet. She is coming down the stairs with a champagne glass in her hand, singing “The Stripper” as she high-kicks for me. Dad and I laugh and cheer, and he wolf-whistles as she blows him a kiss. I don’t want her to have it. Stella, I mean. It’s mine.

“I’m wearing it.”

“Huh?”

“That’s what I’m going to wear. That dress. The Gaultier.”

Stella lets it fall, but still holds on to it, not relinquishing it without a fight. “But it’s so me. And you haven’t even looked at the rest yet.”

“Please, Stell.”

She throws it at me. “Whatever . . . jeez. But I’m having a Westwood.”

“Fine,” I reply. And it is. I don’t care about the other dresses. Just this one.

I can hear Dad and Alfie playing Trivial Pursuit in the front room. Alfie knowing who was the first man on the moon and the third James Bond and the last king of Scotland. I am standing in the hall, wearing the Gaultier, cleavage out, lips red. The color of blood. Of sex.

I walk in.

And I wait for the Ark of the Covenant to open again and hell and damnation to rain down on me. Dad stares, trying to work it out. And then he gets it, and I see a flicker of recognition across his face. He can see her — that night — and he is mesmerized. Caught in the memory.

Alfie is delighted. “I can see your boobs.”

“Shut up, Alfie.” Because what he thinks doesn’t matter. I don’t want him spoiling this.

But Dad is lost, frozen in another place and time.

“So?” I say impatiently. Daring him to tell me to take it off.

“Where did you get it?” he says finally.

I know he is holding it back, like the little boy with his finger in the dam, and it could go at any minute. Could burst out of him. All the things he wants to scream, to shout. And this time I want to hear it, want to know what it is that stalks him at night. This ghost that won’t leave him. Is it that I’m not her, and he wishes I were? Wishes she were here instead of me? Or is it that he’s scared I am too like her. That I am her. I will him to say it. To tell me. Now, when he’s not drunk. Now, when I am strong. Bold. Beautiful.

“The attic,” I say, the words my sugar cube, my trail of pebbles, luring him into a trap. And it has worked. I watch as his mouth opens, wait for the words to come.

But Alfie speaks too quickly. “Dad, can I go in the attic? Can I?” His face is alive with thoughts of hidden treasures.

And the reverie is gone. The moment lost.

“Jude, put something on over that.” Dad’s voice is harsh, his face set.

“Told you,” Alfie gloats, quietly triumphant.

I look up at the ceiling. Begging my fairy godmother to come down now. To wave her wand. But there’s just cracked plaster and cobwebs.

I look down, back at him, waiting for an answer. “It’s too hot for anything else,” I snap.

He tries again. “I want you home by eleven.”

But I’m on fire. I’m burning hot, burning bright. “Don’t wait up.”

I turn. Then I click-clack out of the room in the same heels that carried her down the stairs that Christmas. And I know each sound punctures him. Because it punctures me too.

Ed watches us walk down the path to Matt’s. Everyone watches us. “Let them,” Stella says. “We’re bloody beautiful.”

“Jude.” Ed reaches out to grab my arm.

“That’s her name. Don’t wear it out,” Stella shoots.

“I didn’t think you’d be allowed to come, after last time. Didn’t want you to get into trouble.”

“Whatever,” I say.

And Stella laughs as I pull her away. Looks at Ed over her shoulder and says, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

I have lost Stella. Last seen downing Pernod and Black — an homage to eighties tastelessness, apparently, to go with her dress. I am too hot. I need water or Coke or something. I open the fridge door and let the cool fluorescent air hit me. Breathe in the smell of salad cream and cold chicken.

Someone reaches in and grabs a bottle. Then shuts the door, plunging me back into the heavy heat, cutting off my air supply.

Blair. I look at him in the half-light. Blond streaks slicing into his preppy cut. Polo shirt and cutoffs. And he’s looking right back. At the dress. At me underneath it. My heart beats faster. Fear, or desire. God, no.

“Emily’s outside,” I warn.

“I know.”

He moves closer. I feel his breath on my face. “Don’t you scrub up nicely?” He touches the end of his Bud on my breast. The condensation trickles down, staining the silk. I push him away.

“Get lost, Blair.”

He smiles. “You’re such a tease, Jude.”

“As if.”

He shrugs. “I’ll get what I want in the end.”

“What are you going to do?” I sneer. “Slip me a roofie?”

“Like I need to.”

I roll my eyes. “In your dreams.”

“But you are.” He backs away, still smiling his alligator smile.

“You OK?”

It’s Ed, giving me this weird look as I drain a bottle of Bud. I open the fridge and take another. As if this is normal. As if this is me. “Checking up on me, are you?”

He touches my arm. “No. I . . . I just want to see you.”

I strike a pose. “So here I am. Seen enough?”

“God. What’s wrong with you, Jude? You’re like . . . I don’t know . . . Jekyll and Hyde at the moment. I never know where I stand.”

I know he’s right. And I know why. Because with Stella there’s no room for anyone else. No room for him. But I can’t tell him that. So I just push him away. Like I did before.

“You can stand wherever you want.”

Ed looks down, defeated. Almost. He raises his eyes. “Just don’t do anything . . . stupid.”

I laugh, holding his gaze. Then I turn and walk straight out into the bullring.

“Nice dress, Polmear.” Emily holds up a bottle of Bacardi to toast me in sarcasm. Dawce laughs.

I swing around. “Yeah? Give my regards to Blair. Tell him I might just take him up on his offer.”

I grab a glass off the table and half fill it with something. Anything. I down it. Ugh. Pernod. Like aniseed balls but worse. The alcohol pumps through me with the thudding beat of the music. The house smells sweet, heavy with dope.

“Wanna dance?” Someone grabs my hand.

And I don’t care whose it is. I just let them take me. Take me somewhere. Anywhere.

I WAKE
up in my bed, my legs wound around Stella’s. She is asleep, mouth open, her breath stale with last night’s smoke. Sickly smell of aniseed hanging over her. Still wearing the Westwood dress and cowboy boots. I am in my bra and knickers, the Gaultier crumpled in a heap on the floor. I can see a tear in the back. I look at the clock and groan. It reads 4:00 p.m. I can’t remember getting home. God. Why do I do it? Still, at least I made it back. At least I’m not on Ed’s floor again.

I need to pee. I untangle my legs and sit up. Dizziness sweeps over me. I lean forward, head in my hands. Stella turns over and pulls the covers tighter around herself.

I lower my feet to the floor, walk shakily to the bathroom, sit down on the cool white of the toilet seat. The pee stings me. I realize my whole body hurts. There are bruises on my legs. Bruises I don’t remember getting.

I flush the toilet and walk quickly back to my bedroom. Climb back into bed.

Stella lifts her head. “Oh. It’s you.”

“Who’d you think it was?”

“Dunno. No one.” She lets her head drop and closes her eyes again.

I want to ask her about the bruises. If she knows. But she won’t. She wasn’t around.

“Where’d you go last night?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“You disappeared. Remember?”

She smiles. “Oh, yeah.”

“So?”

“Do we have to do this now? I don’t feel well.” She pulls the cover over her head. Turns her back.

And then it’s not me I’m worrying about anymore. It’s her. What she’s done.

“Stella.” I feel panic rising up in me like stomach acid.

Silence.

“Come on, Stell. What did you do?”

She rolls onto her back, pulls down the cover, and stares at the ceiling. “Well, put it this way. We got back at Emily Applegate.”

And I never believed it when I read it in books. That it could really happen. But I swear, right then, my heart missed a beat. I force the words out. “What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?”

And I am there. See her touching him. See him push her dress up. Hear him beg. Please. Oh, God. Eyes closed. Her watching him the whole time. Smiling. Not even caring what it means. I feel sick.

“Blair? You let him . . . Why?”

“You know why.”

So he found what he really wanted. Her. And even though I don’t want him, something inside me is bruised now, hurt. Because he wanted her more.

“Where?” I say quietly.

“Matt’s room.”

“Where was Emily?”

“Passed out in the garden. She and Dawce were on pills.”

I feel the sickness turn to fear. Anger. “At least tell me you used something.”

“What’s it to you?” Stella is groping around for her cigarettes now. Agitated.

I flinch. “Nothing.” But it is so not nothing. I remember Blair at the fridge, touching me with the bottle. The way he looked. The way he spoke. Like he could have anyone. “He tried it on with me, you know.”

“Yeah, right.” She lights up.

“He did,” I insist. “But I had the sense to tell him where to go.”

She laughs as she blows out smoke. “You’re just jealous. Because you’re not me. Because you’re a virgin. And you always will be. Unless you let Fat Ed do it out of sympathy —”

“Shut up,” I say slowly.

But she doesn’t listen. “Christ, Jude. You’re so uptight, you couldn’t even do your own audition. It’s pathetic. You’re nothing. And you have the bloody gall to criticize me.”

I don’t want to hear it, don’t want to hear what I am. I snap. “Get out!” I yell. “Just get out!”

“Jesus, Jude. What’s the matter?”

“I hate you. I hate you.” I kick and thrash my arms to get her away from me.

Then Dad is in the room and he’s shouting at me to calm down. I’m thinking,
Shit, Stella’s still here,
my head thumping with the drink and the smoke. Dad snatches the cigarette and throws it out of the window. Then he’s holding me down. Begging me to stop. And she leaves. Leaves me to him. I start to cry, great heaving sobs. And I cry until there are no tears left.

Dad stares at an invisible speck on the wall, like he can’t even bear to look at me.